This study of the ancient historian's work is "excellent . . . [A] rigorous and engaging introduction not only to Herodotus, but to many other Greek authors" ( Times Literary Supplement).In the fifth century BCE, Herodotus wrote the first known Western history to build on the tradition of Homeric storytelling, basing his text on empirical observations and arranging them systematically. Herodotus and the Question Why offers a comprehensive examinati...

Our knowledge of Greek history rests largely on literary texts - not merely historians (especially Herodotus, Thucylides and Xenephon), but also tragedies, comedies, speeches, biographies and philosophical works. These texts are themselves among the most skilled and highly wrought productions of a brilliant rhetorical culture. How is the historian to use them? This book addresses this problem by taking a series of extended test-cases, and discussing how we should and should not try to expl...

Rediscovering E. R. Dodds offers the first comprehensive assessment of a remarkable classical scholar, who was also a poet with extensive links to twentieth-century English and Irish literary culture, the friend of Auden and MacNeice. Dodds was born in Northern Ireland, but made his name as Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford from 1936 to 1960, succeeding Gilbert Murray. Before this he taught at Reading and Birmingham, was active in the Association of University Teachers, or AUT (...

Twelve Voices from Greece and Rome is a book for all readers who want to know more about the literature that underpins Western civilization. Chistopher Pelling and Maria Wyke provide a vibrant and distinctive introduction to twelve of the greatest authors from ancient Greece and Rome, writers whose voices still resonate strongly across the centuries: Homer, Sappho, Herodotus, Euripides, Thucydides, Plato, Caesar, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal and Tacitus. To what vital ideas do ...

Maps dominate the modern sense of place and geography. Yet, so far as we can tell, maps were rare in the Greco-Roman world and, when mentioned in sources, are mistrusted and criticized. Today, technological advances have brought to the fore an entirely new set of methods for representing and interacting with space. In contrast to traditional 'topographic' perspectives, the territorial extent of economic and political realms is increasingly conceived though a 'topological' lens, in which th...

Book VI of the Histories is one of Herodotus' most varied books, beginning with the final collapse of the Ionian Revolt and moving on to the Athenian triumph at Marathon (490 BC); it also includes fascinating material on Sparta, full of court intrigue and culminating in Kleomenes' grisly death, and there is comedy too, with Alkmeon's cramming clothes, boots, and even cheeks with gold dust, then Hippokleides 'dancing away his marriage'. In Herodotus' time, Marathon was already reaching almo...

This is a collection of studies on ancient (especially Latin) poetry and historiography, concentrating especially on the impact of rhetoric on both genres, and on the importance of considering the literature to illuminate the historical Roman context and the historical context to illuminate the literature. It takes the form of a tribute to Tony Woodman, Gildersleeve Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia, for whom twenty-one scholars have contributed essays reflecting the inte...

Bringing together nine biographies from Plutarch's Parallel Lives series, this edition examines the lives of major figures in Roman history, from Lucullus (118-57 BC), an aristocratic politician and conqueror of Eastern kingdoms, to Otho (32-69 AD), a reckless young noble who consorted with the tyrannical, debauched emperor Nero before briefly becoming a dignified and gracious emperor himself.Ian Scott-Kilvert's and Christopher Pelling's translations are accompanied by a n...

Plutarch: Alexander is the essential companion to Plutarch's Caesar, the life paired with Alexander in Plutarch's Parallel Lives. This new English version of Alexander is followed by an Afterword about Plutarch’s Parallel Lives by the translator, Christopher Pelling, Emeritus Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University.Plutarch composed his Lives in parallel pairs, and one choice must have seemed obvious: Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, two domi...

Plutarch: Caesar is the essential companion to Plutarch's Alexander, the life paired with Caesar in Plutarch's Parallel Lives. This new English version of Caesar is followed by an Afterword about Plutarch’s Parallel Lives by the translator, Christopher Pelling, Emeritus Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford University.Plutarch composed his Lives in parallel pairs, and one choice must have seemed obvious: Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, two dominating...

Plutarch's vivid and engaging portraits of the Spartans and their customs are a major source of our knowledge about the rise and fall of this remarkable Greek city-state between the sixth and third centuries BC. Through his Lives of Sparta's leaders and his recording of memorable Spartan Sayings he depicts a people who lived frugally and mastered their emotions in all aspects of life, who also disposed of unhealthy babies in a deep chasm, introduced a gruelling regime of military training ...

Dramatic artist, natural scientist and philosopher, Plutarch is widely regarded as the most significant historian of his era, writing sharp and succinct accounts of the greatest politicians and statesman of the classical period. Taken from the Lives, a series of biographies spanning the Graeco-Roman age, this collection illuminates the twilight of the old Roman Republic from 157-43 bc. Whether describing the would-be dictators Marius and Sulla, the battle between Crassus and Spartacus, the...